Chart Detail

Change in sources of comprehensive income for non-elderly households in the middle fifth, selected years, 1979–2007 (2011 dollars)

Income

Wages and imputed taxes

Capital income

Pensions and other income

Cash transfers

Employer- sponsored insurance

In-kind income*

1979

$61,062

$51,184

$3,196

$1,541

$2,172

$2,550

$420

1989

62,785

50,941

3,965

2,391

2,055

3,010

424

1995

64,720

51,213

3,116

2,803

2,617

3,915

1,056

2000

69,495

55,813

3,491

3,106

2,477

3,456

1,151

2007

73,194

56,495

3,405

3,680

3,182

4,569

1,863

Average annual change

1979–1989

0.3%

0.0%

2.2%

4.5%

-0.6%

1.7%

0.1%

1989–1995

0.5

0.1

-3.9

2.7

4.1

4.5

16.4

1995–2000

1.4

1.7

2.3

2.1

-1.1

-2.5

1.7

2000–2007

0.7

0.2

-0.4

2.5

3.6

4.1

7.1

1979–2007

0.6

0.4

0.2

3.2

1.4

2.1

5.5

Total change

1979–1989

$1,723

-$243

$769

$850

-$117

$460

$4

1989–1995

1,935

271

-849

412

562

906

633

1995–2000

4,775

4,601

375

304

-140

-460

95

2000–2007

3,699

681

-86

574

705

1,114

711

1979–2007

12,133

5,311

210

2,140

1,010

2,019

1,443

Share of total change

1979–1989

100.0%

-14.1%

44.6%

49.3%

-6.8%

26.7%

0.2%

1989–1995

100.0

14.0

-43.9

21.3

29.1

46.8

32.7

1995–2000

100.0

96.3

7.9

6.4

-2.9

-9.6

2.0

2000–2007

100.0

18.4

-2.3

15.5

19.1

30.1

19.2

1979–2007

100.0

43.8

1.7

17.6

8.3

16.6

11.9

* In-kind income does not include employer-sponsored insurance.

Source: Authors' analysis of Congressional Budget Office (2010c)

Updated May 22, 2012

Documentation and methodology

Underlying data are unpublished data on income source by family type from the Congressional Budget Office related to its 2010 Web resource, Average Federal Taxes by Income Group. “Imputed taxes” are taxes that are not directly paid by households to government (such as the employer’s share of the payroll tax), but which are “paid” in the form of lower wages and thus are added by the CBO to actual, observed wages to produce the measure of “pretax” income. “Other income” in the pensions category includes withdrawals from 401 (k) plans and traditional pensions, and a small category of “other income” that CBO links with pension income in its reports. The income levels for “Wages and imputed taxes” column and the “Pensions and other income” columns are calculated by the sum of the product of the shares of wages and imputed taxes multiplied by average pretax income for each income group and the sum of the product of the share of pensions and other income multiplied by average pretax income. The contribution to shares from income sources is calculated by multiplying the change in the types of income sources by the changes in the total income for non-elderly households. Data are inflated to 2011 dollars using the CPI-U-RS. Note that the unpublished CBO data are unrounded, and produce slightly different income dollar values than the publicly available CBO dataset underlying Figures 2M and 2Z.